Thorrak, as far as them allowing this anymore "their support staff helped me disassemble my unit to test parts that were potentially problematic", they do not. Doug and I had a couple of very long discussions about this exact thing and he specifically told me these things "for liability reasons, we cannot allow for customers to perform repairs within the base of their unit...In some cases (typically international only), we have shipped replacement components for user servicing...Anything within the base of the unit is considered non-user serviceable and we will not budge on that standing...As for pumps shipped, there is no one size fits all and while our procedure is to bring units in rather than have them worked on in the field, there will always be a fringe case. This is an extremely rare occurrence and only happens for very fringe cases (an investor with mechanical knowledge, an international customer, a customer without a box and mechanically inclined)."
My whole issue with the support team is the draconian tactics they use, after all, I paid $2K for this unit and I own it outright, I can do what I please with it. And I wasn't asking for warranty repair, my unit is over two years old. I asked them for a parts list and a price sheet so I could perform my own repairs. They refused and initially told me some things that turned out to be untrue and when I called them out on it, they had to backpedal. Had they been open and honest up front, my unit would have gotten returned and they would have fixed it for free and none of this would have happened. Up until this point I would have rated them a solid A+, but I had not had any real dealings with them yet. And I think that is why most folks who deal with them rate them highly.
So, I guess if you base your support team rating on the fact that they will repair your Zymatic for free and pay for shipping both ways then yea, sure, A+. But the quality of a support department goes way beyond the fact they are honoring an out of date warranty. Its about interacting with people, understanding each specific person and their uniquie situation, then applying the right amount of technical support to solve the issue. That's an A+ rating.
Treating everyone the same, assuming its a user issue all the time and having the customer repeatedly follow the same troubleshooting steps for over a month, before finally coming to the conclusion that the unit might need to be shipped back, no way...that's average at best.
I am a highly skilled and technical engineer and granted they didn't know me from Adam, but a quick conversation to determine technical abilities could have led to a much happier ending. Once they figured out who I was, what my knowledge level was, I got booted from the forums and they told me this "While forums are a place to share knowledge, information regarding internal workings of the units to the level you have shared is not allowed as, in many occasions, it has led to folks that do not have the skill set you have accumulated opening up their units in order to see what can be done. It is because of this that we have cracked down on many folks in the past. Discussing connections to kegs and brewing techniques are allowed; discussing the internal composure of the units or attributing issues to certain aspects which may lead to a layman attempting to perform field surgery on their units is not.". No sir, they do not have any real customer relations experts over there. I've been in the industry long enough to have dealt with some actual A+ customer support teams.
But like I said, I'm not disgruntled beyond repair, frustrated, for sure, but if the new Z series is what they claim, I shouldn't have to deal with their support department very often, if at all, never hopefully. I like the possibilities of the Z2, I like my Zymatic, but its hard to be silent about their support department when you know better. I hope no one else has an issue like I have had to deal with, but if you do, don't have many conversations with them and just ship your unit back, rate them an A+ and go about your day.